A few suggestions
A few suggestions to ease the burden on neighbors of noisy vacation rentals.
Do not allow more than two persons in a vacation rental. This would discourage mainland buyers from buying homes with intent to cash in with no regard to the neighbors. In most cases two persons are not gonna pay a high price for a large home if they can get a hotel or small cottage or bedroom less expensively. The party noise would be severely reduced as well. All vacation rentals which allow more than two must rent for 60 days or more.
All check-ins must be greeted by the rental owner not an agent, friend or house cleaner. That would keep the owner here not being able to sit in their Silicon Valley home fast asleep while the neighbors deal with the vacation rental. If the owner is not present, than the rental must sit vacant. This would slow the buying of homes for vacation rentals and also help ease the housing crisis here in Hawaii. Very few are gonna buy a large house for a vacation rental if it can’t be rented by more than 2two persons and the owner must be involved in the operation other than collecting the rent.
David Miller
Kukuiopai
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Once again, I’m awestruck
Regarding West Hawaii Today’s Friday front page story “The four healers:” Once again, I am awestruck by the Hawaiian culture prior to the 1820 arrival of the missionaries!
C F Steffen
Captain Cook
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Is anyone else bothered by this?
Over 75% of people opposed the release of male mosquitoes injected with a wolbachia bacterium that makes them incompatible with females and stops reproduction. However, the state Department of Agriculture approved it. Not only that but the DLNR has exempted themselves from doing even the smallest environmental assessment.
This may sound like a good idea but do you know that studies have shown wolbachia enhances both malaria and West Nile viruses? Hawaii agriculture knows this. They also know that there are no studies if a female mosquito gets out and bites humans, or the birds they want to save, what happens. Are humans and birds now sterile? We don’t know and they don’t want to find out.
They also don’t want to find out what kind of new species this is going to create if a female gets out. There have been studies showing that there is horizontal gene transfer so this can happen.
The Department of Agriculture and the DLNR are being very irresponsible with the welfare of the people, animals and aina. This experiment needs a full scope environmental impact study and they are refusing to do any study. They believe this is the only way to save our native birds when they don’t even have an accurate count of our native birds. One of the scariest things is Hawaii agriculture has no plan if anything goes wrong.
And to top it off, this experiment isn’t permanent. They will have to release millions of male mosquitoes every two weeks forever. Hoping a female doesn’t get released. Hawaii has now become a petri dish. Is anyone else bothered by this?
Michelle Melendez
Kealakekua
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